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The Monument 



THE LURE OF 
WASHINGTON 



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Published by 

T H O iM S E N - E L L I S C O M P A N Y 

Baltimore 
New York 






Copyright 1920 

National Park Seminary 

Washington, D.C. 



©CI,A604322 



m 24 1920 






TO YOU 

THE GIRLS OF THE 
GLEN SCHOOL 



These pages are dedicated. For whom else could they 
be written?" From Katahdin, Key West, San Saba and 
Tahoma, the lure ot Washington drew you together, a 
sweet company, to live and learn within the vision of 
the dome; to your ears, rarely ungrateful, these tradi- 
tions ot the Capital were often recited; nay, more, your 
eyes, eager, pristine, yielded many of the impressions 
herein recorded. To you, then, they must be given! 
For the charm of Washington, which you have felt; 
tor the education from Washington which you have 
received; for the patriotism which living in Wash- 
ington has inbred, you and I are gratetul. It is said 
that the great have not the blessing ot friendship; it 
is the privilege of the humble. In friendship then tor 
you, and, with you, in friendship for the tair city of a 
glorious name, I subscribe myself, 

Faithfully yours. 





a^ 







THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

HE LURE OF WASHINGTON! Which of you has not felt 
it? Perhaps first, when you dreamed over a fifth-grade 
geography, and your young eye, eager for pilgrimage, kept 
turning to the woodcut of the United States Capitol with its 
great dome and outstretched wings. The Capitol, "hugest 
of the homes of debate," set on its Roman hill, terraced and 
sloped, gardened and fountained, with Freedom cresting 
the dome, an armed patrol tor democracy! Did you not 
long to behold it? And years and knowledge only trans- 
*-2 muted that fifth-grade desire to stand beneath the glorious 
Dome, into a i.ictcrniined ambition. For what are other cities to Washington? 
every American asks. They may be busy marts, enormous exchanges, factories, 
ports of population, theaters of luxury. They may be notable for sectional history, 
for local scenery, for tradition. But W'ashington! Here is the City of Democracy. 
Urbs ret publicce. Our city, my city, built of the people, by the people, for the 
people, sagaciously chosen by the very Father of his Country to become a capital 
for five hundred millions, each ot whom can claim his share in maintaining it, can 
proudly tread its avenues, be refreshed by its beauty, inspirited by that flutter of 
patriotism which the heart of any American feels as he stepw out of the Union 
Station, and from the caravel of Columbus views the glorious swell of the Dome 
against the southern sky, a silhouette so familiar that the actuality seems unreal. 

Behold, to prove that this is Washington, from the campagna of the golden Po- 
tomac rises the enduring simple shaft that commemorates the Founder of his coun- 
try! Not, to Americans, any monimient, but the Monument, needing no other epi- 
thet than the definite article and that crystalline conception of citizen and patriot 
he left us. Did some sarcastic malcontent call it a "slate pencil once stuck in a mud- 
cake?" He had never seen it pierce the sapphire empyrean ot a February sky, or 
watched a searchlight turn the peak to an opalescent dewdrop at rest in the dark 
bloom of the night. He had never marveled at the tricks the moon plays with the 
shadow ot its marble bulk; or caught a glimpse of it swathed in blowing draperies 
of gray fog like a deity ot the Acropolis. The Capitol, so happily a part of its hill and 
terrace, may furnish what Henry James calls the "warm domestic hearth of Col- 
umbia," but the Monument is in more vistas, poniards more interlaced boughs, 
dominates more roof-lines than does the Dome, seems even a more native featin-e of 
the Washington landscape, as it disappears and reappears in the atmospheric drama 
and is yet ever there, stable, simple, aspiring, as the trunk of a great primitive tree 
whose umbrageousness is silver cloud. 



[7] 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

Someone has said that the Capitol is a monument to Government, and that the 
two dominant memorials in the city are to Washington, the founder of democratic 
government, and to Lincoln, its savior. There are three statues of Lincoln in Wash- 
ington, the inadequate figure on a pedestal in front of the Court House, the heroic 
conception by Daniel French in the classic Memorial beside the Potomac, and on a 
line with this, and east ot the Capitol as the Memorial is west of the Monument, 
Thomas Ball's affecting bronze group of the Emancipator. This stands in a square 
called Lincoln Park, worthy of a visit, not only from the lover of liberty, but from 
the lover of trees. Although the approach to the sculptured group is very pretty and 
pleasing, it is too Italianate for the character of Lincoln. However, Dr. Holmes 
would have come from Boston to measure the robust trunks of the splendid elms 
and catalpas glorifying the square. Their beauty is not so well known, however, as 
that of the large elm on the east side of the Capitol, planted by Washington one 
hundred and twenty years ago. 

After all, it is the trees that enhance the lure of Washington. Lord Bryce en- 
thusiastically noted that those of no other capital in the world can compare with the 
number and variety of Washington trees. The temperate zone has been searched to 
canopy miles upon miles of street, and they have so flourished that avenues are like 
the allees ot \'ersailles, and winter vistas gracious with the violet of fringing boughs 
that "need not June for beauty's heightening." An observer claiming that every city 
has its distinguishing color, said that Washington's is white and green, and com- 
missioners, arranging tor medal ribbons to be given the war heroes of the District of 
Columbia, chose these colors as henceforth official. Certainly in April and May, the 
city becomes a place ot pearl and emerald enchantment in the "rare light, half- 
green, halt-golden, ot the lovely leaty moment." A lush rain, a warm smile from the 
sky, a rippling word in the night, and it is spring. Green embowers the city in as 
many fashions as the water comes down at Lodore: 



"Rising and leaping: sinking and creeping, 
Swelling and sweeping, showering and springing, 
A sight to delight in." 

Every resident has a favorite street of serried elms or maples or western planes, 
the green luxuriance ot which obliterates incongruous bits of urban ugliness, 

"Annihilating all that's made 
To a green thought in a green shade," 

until one may well cry of Washington that "all her ways are pleasantness, and all 
her paths are peace." The patina of the Vermont Avenue maples, like that of the 
McPherson bronze itself; the wave-green of tulip trees before the Pinchot house; 



[8] 




Wistaria at the Home of ijcneral cAnson £Mills on T>upont Circle 



THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 




The 'President's Sheep 



Were kept on the famous lawn prin- 
cipally to restore its pristine fertility 




fountain Fronds ot elms on Rhode Island Avenue; rosy fingers ot pin-oaks around 
the Plaza; pale gold of willows in Potomac Park; fluttering fans of gingkos on Thir- 
teenth Street; honeyed lindens on Massachusetts Avenue; exquisite cones oi cream 
and crimson chestnut about Iowa Circle; these are only a few. 

From March until November, in parks and squares and circles, flowering shrubs 
charm the senses. Travelers need not seek Mukojima and Kabata when they can 
admire more easily royal wistaria on the house of Anson Mills, or that which the 
quaint pillared dwelling at Eleventh and Massachusetts Avenue bears as a veteran 
his service colors; or view the glorious iris open before Lincoln's church on New York 
Avenue; or the many-petaled cherry-trees in Potomac Drive, sent by Japan to Mrs. 
Taft. On Highland Terrace, the forsythia binds a cincture of clear golden bloom 
from street to street, and, further west, oriental magnolias drop rose and cream 
petals before green boughs come. Avenue and circle lead one to another with flowery 
attraction, and season to season; and you must not miss the crocuses on the White 
House slope in waiting for the great waxen magnolia grandiflora June brings to 
Lafayette and Franklin Squares. Every tiny strip of lawn before miles of brick- 
housing is green as Ireland, and May roses blossom over the old iron fences and up 
the pillars of the meanest jerry-builder's row. Crimson Rambler and Dorothy Per- 
kins! What beauty you entwine about Washington! You pour from the cornucopia 
of spring until Oregon cannot make a rosier festival. George Bancroft, who lived 
many decades in the square house, 162J H Street, was here as famous for his pet 
roses as for his history of the United States; and the garden of Twin Oaks, the sub- 



[11] 







^ 1 




1 


L^ 


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N 



THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

urban estate of the Graham-Bell family, shows the queen of flowers holding court. 
During six months of the year, if you drive by the Potomac, you will find the west- 
ern river-wall a wide border of things blossoming; jessamine, iris, Scotch broom, rose- 
mallow, and phlox rise in season against the wide, picturesque river-vista like the 
illuminated border of a far-away Japanese kakemono, big-winged hawks in flight 
above, or the hydroplane from Boiling Field in clever emulation, making one puzzle 
which is the machine, which the bird. 

It is commissioners of parks and grounds that have planted Washington with 
loveliness and given the nation one of "the purest of human pleasure"; but it is to 
the Federal Fathers that we owe this capital "advantageously situated in respect to 
natural charms." The first Congress, moved here and there nine times, discussed 
various permanent sites. Finally Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson com- 
promised conflicting political interests and accepted the joint offer of Maryland and 
Virginia to locate a national capital somewhere on the Maryland side ot the Poto- 
mac. George Washington took charge of the matter as a paternal responsibility for 
generations unborn, and chose a site that is admirable, ample, charming, a wide 
rising amphitheater, between beautifully wooded hills, where granite ledges crop out 
and springs abound, bordered by a river that changes its character upon reaching 
the city as a girl becomes a woman at marriage. Above, it is a wild rushing current 

in a deep defile, with a splendid cataract at 
Great Falls deserving national reservation; 
below, it widens from Georgetown into calm, 
noble, lakelike waters: Potomac, the Indian 
word for "the river of the meeting of the 
tribes." From the new residence heights 
north of the city are lovely silver gleams of 
it; from Anacostia and Arlington, its fair 
arms embrace the newly made river parks; 
from the hill on which the Lee mansion is 
built, Lafayette in 1824 looked across and 
declared he had never beheld a finer view, 
although he could not see, as we do, glorious 
domes, monuments, and columned edifices 
"bosomed high in tufted trees." 

Now the tomb of Peter Charles I'Enfant 
is where Lafayette stood, the dust of the 
designer of Washington having been brought 
for the centenary of the city from the obscure 
The 'Plunge of the 'Potomac at great Falls Maryland farm where he had died penniless, 




[12] 




13 



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6. 



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THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 




Washington 



A view of Washington across the 
Potomac from the Virginia hills 




and the house in Georgetown in which he had his office while drawing his plans, is 
marked with a memorial tablet. Washington's appointment of I'Enfant, a trained 
army engineer, to lay out the Federal City, was a lucky and wise choice. The "high 
luxury of our old friendship with France" is thus not only commemorated in the 
Lafayette and Rochambeau groups opposite the White House and the Bartholdi 
fountain hidden at the foot of the Capitol, but is engraved, ever green, in that 
plan for a great city which I'Enfant drew up, perhaps studying Christopher W^ren's 
plans for an ideal London, perhaps remembering Versailles and other well-laid-out 
European towns. Mr. Taft has demonstrated that I'Enfant's plan, like the Federal 
Constitution itself, was simple, flexible, comprehensive, and far-sighted. The Fine 
.Arts Commission can discover no better plan for the Washington of the twentieth 
century than that of the French engineer of 1800, and what has to be demolished 
to make a Washington Beautiful is onlv what has been erected in opposition to 
I'Enfant's genius and to the French reasonableness and sense for well-ordered vista. 
The visitor used to a checker-board town thinks Washington has a puzzling 
topography, but Henry James found part of the very lure of Washington in the 
"complexity of the plan of the place, the perpetual perspectives, the converging, 
radiating avenues, the frequent circles and cross-ways." This, with the sylvan foli- 
age, gave him the illusion of a royal park, where all the "bronze generals and ad- 
mirals on their named pedestals should have been great garden gods, mossy myth- 
ological marble." So would a mind richly endowed with association transform the 
forty-three public statues with which the city is made memorial of heroes of the 
nation. Unfortunately it is often crudely memorial, although now under the control 
of the Fine Arts Commission, which must pass upon the artistic quality and fitness 
of any new statuary to be set up and endeavor to prevent further barbarism. 

['5] 




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THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

O the lover of Washington there is a veritable lure in a city 
carefully planned by our forefathers. We have a capital 
imagined, then realized, unique in this. No other nation 
has ordained and established a capital citv as well as a 
constitution. Australia is now making the attempt. Bur 
our capital is the dearer as being contemporaneous with 
our constitution, and the French strain in her heredity is 
not unprecious. Traditions of social and political Washing- 
ton can lead us along the whole history of our nation. A 
student in the cupola of the Capitol may trace a national 
evolution as easily as he can the radiating streets of the city. There, southeast, on 
Anacostia heights, lived the tribes of the Powhatan; northwest, to Little Falls, in 
1608, Captain John Smith journeyed; north of the marble towers of Sokiiers' Home 
is Saint Paul's Church, the glebe of which was recorded in 17 19; all about are lands 
that were part and parcel of royal patents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
and the old family names linger in Washington directories, even though urban progress 
has distributed their properties and pulled down brick and plaster dwellings that were 
older than the Declaration of Independence. In Georgetown, however, is the house 
where young Washington stopped on his way from Alexandria after receiving his com- 
mission under Braddock, and the Braddock Trail, now a good motor road, leads 
out of Georgetown north into the Blue Ridge. A trifle east of it, near the District of 
Columbia line, is Clean Drinking Manor, a patent from Lord Baltimore in 1650, 
where Judge Coates entertained Washington returning from Fort Duquesne. Clay, 
Webster, and Calhoun were later guests at Clean Drinking. 

Many Washington houses, however, are rich in association with this later national 
period. Georgetown, the Avenue, and the streets from C to K are associated with 
historic figures and scenes and the story of the first seventy-five years of the young 
republic can be read there. When Lafayette was the Nation's guest he visited Tudor 
Place on Thirty-first Street, and that elegant house stands as a well-preserved ex- 
ample of late Georgian architecture. It was designed by Latrobe, one of the archi- 
tects of the Capitol, who loved the classic line. The Octagon House on New York 
Avenue, designed in 1799 '^y ^^^ versatile English architect, Dr. William Thornton, 
has been another scene of social and historic romance. The home of a distinguished 
Virginian family, the Tayloes, it entertained the elite of Washington during her first 
half-century. After the burning of the President's House in 1814, the Madisons 
accepted the Octagon as an executive mansion, and here the Treaty of Ghent was 
signed "in the circular room on a circular table," and peace between the two great 
English-speaking nations ratified forever. To preserve the house as a specimen of 
Thornton's domestic architecture, the Washington Chapter of the American Insti- 




[17] 





THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

tute of Architects bought it. The bell-ring- 
ing ghosts are laid, but it is easy in its spa- 
cious rooms to evoke courtly groups of 
brocaded ladies and gentlemen around the 
Tayloe mahogany and silver. 

It is lamentable that more of the houses 
of historic association have not been pre- 
served. Yearly another falls in the demand 
for space for government or commercial 
business. A notable recent example is Cor- 
coran House and its fine garden, on the site 
of which rises the National Chamber of Con- 
gress. Corcoran House, originally Swann 
House, was a gilt to Daniel Webster by 
admirers of the orator in the height of his 
majestic power, and figures in all the mem- 
oirs of the period when he was Secretary of 
State. Mr. William Corcoran, the wealthy 
banker, bought and enlarged it and again it 
furnished hospitality to distinguished Amer- 
icans and diplomats. Here Mr. Corcoran gathered the nucleus of the picture gallery 
now housed on Seventeenth Street, here he died in national fame, a generous patron 
of fine arts. After his death it was the successive Washington home of the witty 
and wealthy Calvin Brice of Ohio and Chauncey Depew of New York, both famous 
hosts. W' hat sallies of after-dinner humor the walls have heard ! What political moves 
have been eased into action there! The house ought to have been preserved for a 
museum of social history like the Cluny, even though itself without especial archi- 
tectural merit; but an attempt once made to raise a fund to buv the fine old Key 
house on M Street, overlooking the canal and the Potomac, where the author of 
the national anthem long resided, miserably failed and discouraged similar attempts. 

The Burns cottage, associated with President Washington and the allotment of 
Maryland farms for the Federal capital, was razed twenty-five years ago. So was 
the Van Ness mansion. For the legends of the latter no romance can be romantic 
enough, uniting as the house did the ancestry and politics of New York with the 
social worlcH of the South. It was in the wine cellars of the Van Ness house that an 
unsuccessful conspiracy aimed to imprison Lincoln. The story of Marcia Burns Van 
Ness herself has not yet been celebrated in drama, nor have we personal diary or 
copious letters in which to read her reflections upon the stately events in which she 
was gracious belle or hostess; but her beauty brought her a distinguished husband 



The Hermitage — Clean -Drinking iManor 



[.8] 




5 

to 



^ 



THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 




The ^an-Amerkan Union 



A building devoted to the official relations of the American 
Republics — our own and twenty in South America. The 
structure is considered one of the most beautiful in the world 



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and the "grandest mansion in the country," and her good works, a public funeral 
and the gratitude of little children, as the founder of the first city orphan asylum 
in the United States. Her much-inscribed mausoleum, a copy of the temple ot \'esta, 
has been safely removed to the terrace of Oak Hill, near the dust of John Howard 
Payne, brought from Africa to a sweet home by generous Mr. Corcoran. 

The lover ot the past may rejoice, however, that the site of the Van Ness mansion 
is now magnificently marked by the home of the Pan-American Union, called by 
someone the "Capital of the New World." This Union is an international organiza- 
tion ot twenty-one American republics, and devoted to the development and ad- 
vancement ot commerce and a friendly intercourse and good understanding among 
the countries it represents. The governing board is composed of the Latin-American 
diplomatic representatives in Washington and our Secretary of State, with a Direc- 
tor-General, who, it is said, has a bigger job than the President of the United States, 
since the second manages the affairs of one nation; the first, those of twenty-one. 

Certainly the Director-General has the most beautitid executive mansion in the 
world. The structure and ground represent an investment to which the American 
Republics contributed 1250,000 and Andrew Carnegie |8';o,ooo. The building is of 
white marble, and architecturally is a combination of the classical and the Spanish 
Renaissance. The motives tor ornamentation were derived from the aboriginal art 
of pre-Columbian America and that of the Spanish colonies. Facing the lofty vesti- 



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THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 



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^4 Corner of the 'Pan-American Union 



Showing a part of the lornial gardens and 
the Washington Monument in the distance 



bule is a Spanish patio in which are collected rare plants and flowers of tropical 
America. In the center is a marble fountain modelled by Gertrude Vanderbilt 
Whitney. The figures on the shaft symbolize the continuity of Americans on their 
own soil. The tiled pavement reproduces designs from Aztec and Indian temples. 
In the rear of the patio is a corridor used for exhibits of Latin-American countries. 
The reading-room contains a relief map of Latin-America to illustrate the area and 
physical character of the various republics and the magnitude of the work and ob- 
jects of the Union, which aims to be a vital factor for international peace by ena- 
bling the settlement of international disputes by international understanding. 

The dedication of the Pan-American building, April 26, 1910, occasioned one of 
the most magnificent social gatherings in Washington history. Subsequently the 
elegance of the building, its ample spaces, and its exquisite garden architecture have 
made it an ideal successor to the famous hospitality of the Van Ness mansion. "Men 
come to build stately before they garden finely," Bacon decided, but in the Pan- 
American these two fine arts are supremely blended. The Aztec sunken garden, with 
its triple-arched loggia finished in ancient tiles from Mexico and Peru, is a horti- 
cultural gem. Although a modern structure, designed for practical purposes, the 
whole building is so beautiful, especially in moonlight or under the opal rays of elec- 
tric globes, that it would inspire the pen of the essayist of the Alhambra, to whom, 
by the way. Colonel Van Ness was host in Irving's early career. 



[ 22 ] 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

V in the Pan-American the best motives and characteristics 
of Hispanic architecture can be delightfully discovered, the 
student of architecture can endlessly thus illustrate his text 
by passing from public building to building. Not many 
"cities have borrowed so extensively as Washington from 
the architectural achievements of the past. The employ- 
ment of the column in its public architecture is notable." 
The Treasury is not set properly, either for the vista from 
the Capitol to the White House, or for its own dignity, but 
"few architectural features in the New World surpass in 
majesty" its seventy-two Ionic columns, stately monoliths, like those of the temple 
of Pallas at Athens. Each of these is cut from a solid stone, and weighs about 
thirty-five tons. The replacing of the original columns, which had begun to crumble, 
with the present single blocks was begun before the Civil War and not completed 
until 1909. If not superb like the Treasury, the colonnaded portico of the south 
front of the White House is gracious, and overlooks a lovely fountain where the 
President may quote II Penseroso, 

" Retired leisure 
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure," 

although the court of the famous Roosevelt tennis-cabinet has been efl'aced, and a 
grazing flock is now the "cynosure of neighboring eyes." 

The White House porticos are rivalled in modern classic proportion by the neigh- 
boring south portico of Continental Hall, the thirteen Corinthian columns o\ which 
commemorate the original states. The City of Washington was not created until 
after the Revolution, but, as the capital city, it was chosen by the National Society 
of the Daughters of the American Revolution for the location of their hall, built to 
"perpetuate the memory of the spirit of the men and women who achieved American 
independence. ... by the encouragement of historic research in relation to the 
Revolution and the publication of its results, and by the preservation ot documents 
and relics." This is said to be the only building in the world erected and owned by 
the financial efforts of women only. It cost $350,000, and in design is classic Geor- 
gian. Here, on the annual anniversary of the Battle ol Lexington and Concord, 
gather representatives of the seven hundred thousand members of this American 
organization. In the convention hall the presiding officer's table is a replica of that 
on which the Declaration of Independence was signed, and many other reproduc- 
tions and originals have been presented to make the building typical ot the Colonial 
period. A most remarkable memorial is the committee room of the New Jersey 
Chapter. When the British frigate Jugnj/a was sunk during the Battle of Red 




[--3] 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

Bank, New Jersey, October 23, 1777, it was allowed to remain in the waters of 
the Delaware River for many years. Miss Ellen Mecum, a great-granddaughter 
of the owner of the property adjoining the water in which the vessel was sunk, 
originated the idea of using the timbers of the ship for the furniture to be placed 
in a room for the New Jersey Chapter. The color of the Augusta oak grew lighter 
toward the center of the timbers, owing to the length of time they had been sub- 
merged, but the different shades of silver-gray in the chairs and table are most 
attractive. Iron wrought from the anchor of the .iugnsta was used in making the 
chandelier of the room. 

Five cases in another section of Continental Hall contain personal belongings of 
men and women prominent in early history, although the tourist supplements these 
by the cases in the National Museum and, of course, the visit to Mount Vernon. 
The precious Declaration of Independence itself is in the safe of the Library of the 
State Department, put away from the obliterating light of day. In that library are 
also bound papers of Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Monroe, Hamilton, and 
Franklin, purchased bv the Government at different periods; Washington's sword; 
Jefferson's writing desk; Franklin's cane and buttons; and Lafayette's lorgnette 
given him by the devoted W'ashington. While the past cannot create itself in the 
State Department as actually as at Mount Vernon, an American feels a transport 
of reverence before these human relics of the Federal fathers which cannot be stirred 
by the museinn mementoes of Europe. 

It is this "close-up" to history, to use the phrase of the film, that makes Wash- 
ington a fascinating study. Here are many local associations with pre-Federal his- 
tory; here, or nearby, are the most important personal associations with Washington, 
Jefferson, and Madison; here are constantly increasing collections of mementoes of 
these early Fathers; here can be found traces of the fire set by British troops in 18 14 
when thev marched into the unprotected city from Bladensburg and burned the 
unfinished Capitol and the White House. Here are reminders of our various wars 
in the captured cannon preserved at the Navy Yard, at the War Department, and 
at the National Soldiers' Home, founded by General Winfield Scott in 1851 out of 
funds from Mexico. The mast of the Maine is at Arlington, ht Arlington, too, are 
the graves of the bluff Indian-fighting generals who kept extending the frontier for 
our nation until it meant the Philippines. Lawton, who fell in battle in Mindanao, 
is buried there, and Dewey lies on a bluff overlooking the city where he loved and 
was beloved. 

Perhaps .Ariington includes more nearly than any other single place historical 
association with the whole period of the making of the United States. John Parke 
Custis bought Ariington as a tract of 1,160 acres for $55,000. It was part of a patent 
from Royal Governor Berkley to Robert Howsen, by him conveyed to John Alex- 



[24] 




Continental Hall 



Official home of the Dauehters 
of the American Revolution 




Home of general ^bert 6. Lee 



Portico of the famous Cus- 
tis-Lee Mansion at Arlington 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

ander, of Alexandria, for six hogsheads of tobacco. Custis's son, Daniel, married 
Martha Dandridge, the prettiest and most attractive girl in Williamsburg, the old 
Virginia capital, inherited Arlington, had two children, John Parke and Eleanor, 
and died young, entailing the estate to his son, but leaving his widow rich for those 
days on 1 100,000. It was this Mrs. Martha Custis whom Washington married, in- 
ducing her to bring her children to live at Mount Vernon, fifteen miles below on the 
same bank of the Potomac. Colonel Washington had inherited his estate from his 
half-brother, Lawrence, although the house, as we see it, was not built until 1786. 
Mount Vernon at that time was certainly more accessible to other great estates and 
the lively society of Alexandria and Mrs. Custis probably left Arlington hill with no 
reluctance, although one may guess that Washington, when supervising his stepson's 
property interests, dreamed of the city that was to arise out ot the beautiful cam- 
pagna across from Arlington. Eleanor Custis died early, and her brother, having 
married one of his cousins in the famous Maryland Calvert family, died in 1781, 
leaving two children to the Washingtons' care, Nellie and George Washington Parke 
Custis. It is the latter who in 1803 completed the present Arlington mansion, and 
who made it until his death in 1857 the scene of boundless hospitality and social dis- 
tinction. Born at Mount Airy, the Calvert manor northeast of Washington, he 
allied himself to another famous family by marrying a Fitzhugh of Virginia. His 
only surviving child, Mary, in time married a West Pointer, Robert E. Lee, son of 
"Light Horse Harry," of Revolutionary distinction. When secession became a 
cause. Colonel Lee, an army favorite, was informally consulted at Arlington as to his 
assuming command of the Union forces. Mr. Francis P. Blair, editor of The Globe, 
carried the message at the suggestion of General Scott and Lincoln. But Lee went 
with Virginia, and Union troops soon possessed Arlington and the priceless relics 
of Washington. Arlington could not be confiscated because entailed, but the non- 
pavment of taxes gave the United States a pretext to buy it for $23,000, and the 
military cemetery, at the suggestion of General Meigs, was established in 1864. 
After the death of General Lee, George Washington Custis Lee, the heir, success- 
fully disputed the legality of the tax sale. In 1884 1150,000 was paid him by the 
Government for his rights in the estate, and it then became the Valhalla of mili- 
tary and naval heroes. 

If the government radio towers erected on John Custis's fields can report the 
speech of Paris, Panama, and Guam, this height of Arlington registers correspond- 
ingly far in history. From here one might have seen the first oaks and poplars fall 
under white hands; the building up of Georgetown, a prosperous port; the chain- 
ferry working boats laden with elegant folk and their slaves and horses to Analostan 
Island, whence they journeyed across the Causeway to Virginia; one almost might 
have seen the procession, September 18, 1793, when W'ashington, on his favorite 



[26] 



THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 





The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 
administering the oath to President Wilson 



"muslin charger," wearing the Masonic apron made by Madame Lafayette, and 
heading three lodges and the Alexandria artillery, laid the southeast cornerstone of 
the original Capitol; one might surely have seen on July 4, 1848, the laying of the 
cornerstone of a monument to Washington in the place chosen before his death, the 
wives of two of his contemporaries being present, Mrs. Hamilton and Mrs. Madison, 
and his foster grandson, George Washington Parke Custis; one might also have seen 
the shaft standing desolately incomplete for thirty years until a national shame pre- 
vailed and the bright capstone of aluminum, bearing the words Laus Deo, was put 
in place in 1884. 

From Arlington might have been discovered Madison's ridiculous flight from the 
White House to Rokeby, near Chain Bridge. "Washington's picture and a cartload 
of goods from the President's house in Company"; from here, too, might have been 
watched with awe the great copper wind-clouds and the continuous stream of elec- 
tricity that swept over the British troops in Washington, August 25, 1814, upset 
three-pounder guns, lifted men out of the saddle and disturbed morale to such an 
extent that the British withdrew. Nearly half a century later it was on the steps of 
Arlington that General Irwin McDowell was photographed with his staff, official 
defender of Washington on the Virginia side, and from Arlington the old Long 
Bridge was clearly visible when across it poured, July 22, 1861, in a drenching rain, 
a routed army fleeing from Bull Run, "confusion increased and multiplied by the 



[27] 






THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

presence among the fugitives ot a multitude ot panic-stricken picnickers, Congress- 
men, civilians of every sort, and lavishly dressed women who had gone out in car- 
riages and carryalls to see the spectacle ot a Federal army walking over the Con- 
federates." The view henceforth constantly had new features, as Washington be- 
came a wartime citv, full of hastily erected hospitals and barracks, and ringed about 
with earthwork defences of the Federal capital. 

A boulevard is already planned to connect the sites of these old forts and pre- 
serve in beauty historic associations with Washington in the sixties. It will run 
across the new Memorial Bridge from Arlington to the Lincoln Memorial, around 
Potomac Park, up Rock Creek \'allev between Old Georgetown and New NN'ashing- 
ton into the glens of Rock Creek Park and on to the heights of Fort de Russy, where 
it will turn eastward along Military Road to Fort Stevens, across into the park of 
Soldiers' Home, that five hundred-acre sylvan retreat for veterans, swans and Hol- 
steins, southeast to the superb heights above the Anacostia River, where the water- 
front park is already reclaimed, and then follow the shore back to the point where 
the smaller river joins the Potomac. There the War College stands, an impressive 
edifice. The site was that of the Civil War arsenal, where the conspirators against 
President Lincoln's life were justly executed in 1865. Just above on the Anacostia 
River is the former Navy Yard, established as far back as 1804, with its gateway 
designed by Latrobe and thus contemporary with the Capitol. Once a shipbuilding 
plant, the yard is now a naval gun factory and the station for the President's yacht 
and despatch boat. Neighboring to the Navy Yard, are the Marine Barracks, the 
Washington home of the heroes of Belleau Wood, and also of the celebrated band, 
once led by John Philip Sousa, whose marches penetrated remote Africa and Siberia. 
This band, however, had the place of honor at the White House and government 
ceremonies for a century, and is even mentioned in Mrs. Madison's letters. After 
the laying out of the original city, the first domestic construction was done in what 
is now the Navy Yard section. The Capitol was planned to face east, but the city 
gradually grew toward Georgetown. 

It was not until after the Civil War and the renovation of Washington streets by 
the Governor of the District, Alexander Shepherd, that Washington Beautiful be- 
came possible. Shepherd "took from the walls the dusty map of I'Enfant and Elli- 
cott, impressed its outlines on marsh, on hill, on woodland, and under the cloudless 
sky, out of the fresh earth, the new Washington rose as from the stroke of the en- 
chanter's wand," declaimed a Maryland senator at the Centennial of the Federal 
City in 1900. It was no cloudless sky, because Shepherd's improvements aroused a 
storm of protest from District taxpayers, but the new pavements were laid, streets 
cut through, and Washington prospered materially under the Grant regime. By 
1900 national pride and a better educated attitude toward the influence of beauty 



28 





& 



§ 



to 

-5 



N 



THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

in a national city brought about the formation ot the Park and the Fine Arts 
Commissions. The recommendations of the Park Commission, when executed, 
will create a city of vistas as planned by I'Enfant, and build it about groups of 
noble public buildings situated on the axis of the Mall. The park system will be 
developed and amplified until it becomes a magnificent perimeter tor the city and 
lungs for her citizens. "The educational effect of the architectural development ot 
Washington," wrote Mr. Taft, "will be most elevating. It will show itself in the 
plans tor the improvement of other cities, and it will cultivate a love of the beau- 
tiful that will make for the happiness of all." Moreover, the growing importance 
ot the United States among nations emphasizes the aspect ot her capital with 
tremendous importance. A shabby or ugly barbaric city is no longer excusable. 
The mecca, not only of her own citizens, but of the choicest ot the world, Washing- 
ton must be irreproachable, an example of municipal beauty and government, and 
ot national pride. 

Some municipal promoters would increase the industrial and manufacturing 
business of Washington. Although they can quote the founder of the city in plan- 
ning for a great "commercial emporium," may their tribe decrease! No private 
industry should be allowed to mar the beauty of the city or its value as a neutral 
zone for convention and conference. As the center for government business, 
Washington will have auxiliary commerce enough. The Federal Government 
already maintains one of the finest manufacturing plants in the world, the Bureau 
ot Engraving and Printing. This must not be contounded with the huge Govern- 
ment Printing Office, northwest of Union Station, which also claims that its 
descriptive adjectives should be in the superlative. The Printing Otfice prints, 
wraps and distributes all government publications. Its output is enormous, and 
includes the CongressioJial Record, published daily during the sitting ot Congress. 
At trequent intervals campaigns are waged against the Printing Office and the 
waste ot public money in printed words, but the plant and the output of the Public 
Printer increases as public business increases. 

The Bureau of Elngraving and Printing is a division ot the Treasury Department. 
Here are designed and printed from the plates skilfully engraved in the Bureau 
all United States notes, bonds and certificates, all national bank notes, all postage 
stamps, all revenue stamps, all Treasury drafts and checks, all disbursing checks, 
all federal licenses and commissions, all patent and pension certificates, and all 
authorized portraits of public officers. The business ot the Bureau is normally 
gigantic and during the war increased incredibly. It has the reputation of being 
an ideal workshop as far as industrial conditions can be mitigated tor the worker, 
but the strictest accounting of each worker and his work is kept because of the 
pecuniary value of the paper and products involved. This strict supervision seems 




.^i 




The Capitol 



© E. L. Crandall 
At 2. JO a.m., April 6, 191 7, the moment when war was declared against Ger- 
many. The reflection of the dome in the wet sidewalk makes it an unusual picture 



THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 




'•Bureau of Engraving and '■Printing 



Night view ot Bureau of Engraving and Print- 
ing, witli the Monument in the background 




to the visitor, also strictly guarded, like that ot a penal institution, and while he 
appreciates the worth of a two-cent stamp more than before he saw and snielled 
the red ink in the making, he is relieved to be tree again to wander among the trees 
of the Mall. At night, however, the Bureau is a picturesque sight seen trom Poto- 
mac Drive. The long reflections of electric and mercury lights peacefully spill 
themselves into the depths of the Tidal Basin in great flakes ot white and violet 
and green. No sound issues, and the tremendous building looks like a Temple of 
Light erected for a gav exposition rather than an industrious manufactory of 
paper moneys. 

If much of the fascination of Washington has been shown to lie in the history 
of its development and in allusions to its makers and the making of the nation, 
the Capital has a unique attraction for the American in being not a mercantile or 
commercial city, but a city the activities ot which depend upon industrial leisure. 
Henry James pointed out what a tremendous difference is made by this, and how 
Washington is the only "large human assemblage on the continent" where the 
social life counts for men. Elsewhere, he finds the business man must leave society 
to the woman. Here both are in the social picture, with a "male presence supremely 
presiding" in the White House. It is Mr. James who distinguishes Washington from 
other American cities as the City of Conversation. It is a city dedicated to politics 
and government and society, and the talk that crystallizes these ideas. The circles 
of conversation spread out from the Capitol and the Committee rooms in the great 
Office Buildings north and south ot the Senate and House wings: they are around 
the White House itself, circles to which the newspaper man keeps tangent; they are 
circles of the newspaper men themselves, the Fourth Estate, here all experts and 
all raconteurs. 



[33] 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

The diplomatic circles, moreover, distinguish Washington and lift her beyond 
other cities that boast a census that is cosmopolitan, but made up of industrial 
workers. One afternoon's drive in Washington can show the visitor a delegation 
from Abyssinia in crimson mantles and silk turbans, carrying into the White 
House gifts of ivory and gold; a party of big Oklahoma chiefs come to interview the 
Secretary ot the Interior about oil lands; dapper South American attaches emerging 
from the Pan-American Building; a group of earnest Middle-Europeans going into 
the State Department with their despatch bags; the children of the Chinese minister 
being sunned by their nurses; some British secretaries keen for tennis at Chevy 
Chase. One never knows whom to expect, or what, although international manners 
have progressed since the days of Meley Meley of the Turkish Legation, who is 
said to have embraced a portly negress employed at an entertainment given in his 
honor, because she reminded him of his favorite and most costly wife; or of the 
early lavish Chinese balls in Stewart Castle on Dupont Circle, when the American 
guests crowded so madly for refreshments that Paris toilettes were irreparably 
ruined and servants even injured. 

Washington diplomats, however, do lend to the city not only the festivity of 
various uniforms and complexions and liveried motors, but also etiquette. There 
are still manners and social usages expected in a capital, and conventions for prece- 
dence and the making and returning of calls that disgust a bolshevist and need 
memory and tact for observance. The gentle art of dinner-giving is also extant in 
Washington, and is practiced in private houses and not in hotels. Hostesses survive 
who respect gastronomy and to whom a Peacock Alley and cafe suppers are tawdry 
things. There are many homes whose social gatherings are salons, open to the 
privileged, although unadvertised to press reporters. Enormous formal teas and 
receptions passed away a decade ago, and the technique of the visiting card is not 
so elaborate as formerly, when everybody's card and her husband's had to be left 
for every female member of a household visited. Social tradition, however, guarded 
by the "cave-dwellers," as the older resident families are called, obtains even over 
the floating political population and the plutocrats who flock to Washington to 
build palaces, copied from Italy and France. Foreign governments have housed 
their diplomatic representatives indifferently well, though there are some notable 
exceptions. In 1914, there were eleven embassies and twenty-nine legations. The 
oldest of these is the British, a Victorian brick pile on Connecticut Avenue and N 
Streets, where the crowns on the gatepost announce that England still tolerates a 
king; but it is not nearly so dignified in style as the former home of the embassy on 
Lafayette Square, where young Owen Meredith drafted "Lucille" when his uncle, 
Lord Lytton, was minister. It is said that Lord Ashburton planned to move the 
legation from that house to Grant Row, on Capitol Hill, but the churlishness of 



[34] 




*77»e Connecticut oAt enue 'bridge 



Sometimes called the "Million Dollar Bridge," 
spans Rock Creek at a very picturesque spot 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

the builder offended him, and he chose the northern site, to the social decadence 
of the eastern. The handsomest of the new embassies are on Sixteenth Street, the 
Avenue oi thePresidents, with a superb vista from the French Embassy on Meridian 
Hill to the White House, a mile away. Anyone may daily see the modest carriage 
oi M. Jusserand waiting to take the Ambassador for his daily drive in the park. 

While social rank is recognized in Washington as in no other city, republican 
equality crowds her, if not unpolitely. Marquises and coimtesses and lords are 
shopping, going to the theater, walking the same pavement with the humblest 
native of Kansas, Vermont or North Dakota. If you watch the pictorial press and 
the news films, you discover the distinguished are your neighbors anywhere. The 
Secret Service men who accompany the President are the onlv outriders who 
announce rank, and even the White House eagle does not scream. Your rusty little 
car may get first into one of the charming crossings of Rock Creek, and the Presi- 
dent waits on the other side, with courteous salute, it you recognize your chief 
magistrate. Congressmen, who loom large in their home districts, are as plentiful 
in the capital as blackberries in the field. Unless they are veterans or notably 
advertised, they are not observed of all observers, although their wives and daugh- 
ters are the only eligibles to the Congressional Club to which Mrs. John Henderson 
gave the clubhouse at 2001 New Hampshire Avenue. 

In proportion to its size, W'ashington is not a city of many clubs, hardly three 
dozen all told that have abiding place. Perhaps the Capitol itself is a sort of club 
and usurps the function of others. The House of Representatives according to its 
own record is a kaleidoscopic picture of the boasted fact that a man may climb to 
Capitol Hill from any walk in life. Some of the callings hitherto pursued by the 
Sixty-sixth Congress are "iron-moulder, miner, farmer, banker, stock raiser, horti- 
culturist, tree surgeon, cotton-planter, sugar producer, superintendent of public 
education, physician, journeyman hatter, cheese manafucturer, locomotive engineer, 
professor of history, dean of college and baggage master." A few Washington clubs 
other than Congress have more than local reputation. A University Club main- 
tains academic standards on McPherson Square. The Army and Navy have com- 
modious and dignified quarters overlooking Vinnie Ream Hoxie's statue of the 
Old Salamander, Admiral Farragut. The Metropolitan is wealthy, fastidious, and 
non-commercial. There are several outdoor clubs, all inviting Presidential golf. 
The most prominent and exclusive is that at Chevy Chase, the name of which con- 
jures up the ballad of Percy and Northumberland and 

"A woefull hunting once there did 
In Chevv-Chace befall." 



The property of the club was a country estate belonging to an old family, who lent 

[36] 




The Scottish %Ue Temple 



Representing one hundred and forty sets of Masonic bodies and modelled after the 
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, was erected at a cost of ^1,500,000 



THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 






m> " ' 



•*« 9c. 



'^C'>r'V»??:^''- 










qA '^sidential oAvenue 



An avenue looking toward 
the Washington Monument 



it to the late Honorable Joseph Chamberlain, the English statesman, for his honey- 
moon when he married Miss Endicott of Salem. The Club was originally a fox- 
hunting organization, but with the growth of Washington has developed into an 
aristocratic suburban group, with an admirable golf course and a new house built 
of Maryland stone in the style of the venerable Nourse homestead on Wisconsin 
Avenue, the "Highlands." 

Probably the Cosmos Club embraces features more unusual than does Chevy 
Chase. Its quarters include the elegant house of Benjamin Ogle-Tayloe, one of 
the most accomplished Americans of his time, heir to the governors of Maryland, 
and collector of rare art treasures now in the Corcoran Gallery. The house was 
later lived in by the Pauldings, Vice-President Hobart, Senator Hanna, and the 
Militant SuffVagettes, a motley array of ancestral denizens for the thinkers who 
make up the Cosmos Club. The main part of the club dwelling was the home of 
Dolly Madison from her husband's death until her own funeral from neighboring 
Saint John's. That quaint church, erected in 1816, was the first building on the 
square, and became a President's Church, attended by every incumbent of the 
White House from Madison to Lincoln, and also by President Arthur, Mrs. Roose- 
velt and Mrs. Taft. Mrs. Madison was confirmed there in 1845. ^^e had returned 
to Washington in 1837 and taken up her residence in the Lafayette Square house 

[39] 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

her husband had left her, then a small two-story and attic structure, having a 
gable roof and dormer windows and a garden to H Street and to the Tayloe house. 
It was here the pretty and energetic widow held a sort of court, and her name 
overshadows that of the politicians and soldiers who later occupied the house. As 
the abode of the Cosmos Club, it is considered the intellectual center of non-polit- 
ical life in Washington. Mr. Wells was terribly disappointed that Washington 
did not think, even at the Cosmos Club. He found no traffic in modern ideas, only 
several thousand scientific men busily engaged with investigation on social lines 
of science, and no philosophy to synthesize their research. He decided that Wash- 
ington "converses well without awkwardness, without chatterings, kindly, watch- 
ful, agreeably witty," but that she is incurious and indifferent to modern social 
perplexities. He confessed, however, that it was the most agreeable social atmos- 
phere in all America. 

The governmental departments and bureaus utilizing these scientific experts and 
collecting them in the capital, are increasing tremendously. The Smithsonian 
Institution used to mean the science of Washington, but the Departments of Agri- 
culture and Commerce take up investigations and publish monographs that make 
them successful rivals, and the various surveys of the enormous Department ot 
the Interior even infringe upon the ethnographical work of the Smithsonian. The 
latter establishment is the gift of an eccentric Englishman who in 1826 left his 
fortune to the United States for furthering the "increase and diffusion of knowl- 
edge among men," believing that in the new republic he had never visited, the 
Book of Knowledge would be opened to the Human Understanding as it is repre- 
sented in Mr. Blashfield's painting in the canopy of the Congressional Library. 
The Smithsonian Institution is governed by a board of United States officials who 
administer this fund, devoting it to the needs of original investigation and the 
international exchange of scientific publications. It also has under its charge vari- 
ous government bureaus furthering education, among them are the National Zoo- 
logical Park and the National Museum. 

The National Museum is the depository of national collections. These are 
housed in the original Smithsonian edifice; in the older Museum, including collec- 
tions relating to American history and the development of the arts and crafts of 
man; and in the splendid new building, which shows exhibits illustrating ethnology, 
archaeology, paleontology, zoology and geology. Catlin's Indian portraits are there; 
the Roosevelt African animals; mastodons, meteorites, totem poles, cliff dwellings, 
and the birds of the District of Columbia. These collections are indeed illustrations 
for the whole book of knowledge. Housed at present in the new Musuem is also 
the nucleus of a National Gallery of Art. It comprises the Marsh collection of 
prints, the Johnston collection of British painters, and the Evans collection of 



40, 




^ 



d. 



THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 




The 'Rational ^Museum 



Contains in preservation the bodies of iic.ul) laliv known 
animal from the smallest insect up to the giant dinosaur 



sv 



'^ 



contemporary American art. The Freer collection of Chinese and Japanese art, 
and the famous Whistler etchings and paintings are displayed in a neighboring 
new building on the Mall where the Peacock Room from the Leyland house is set 
up to exemplify Whistler's genius in decoration, and impress the fact that he was 
a native of the United States. This is a gift to the nation bv the late Mr. Freer, 
of Detroit, Michigan. 

The Corcoran Art Gallery does not belong to the Government. It also was a 
philanthropy of a wealthy citizen of Georgetown who died in 1893 and who be- 
lieved with Carnegie "that at least one-half of his money accumulations should 
be held for the welfare of men." The original public gallery at the corner of the 
Avenue and Seventeenth Street was used as a hospital during the Civil War, but 
later restored. When outgrown, it was superseded by the marble gallery facing 
the Mall. Mr Corcoran also founded the Louise home on Massachusetts Avenue, 
a retreat for gentlewomen of Southern birth who have become impoverished. This 
Elysium of gentility is in memory of Mr. Corcoran's wife, Louise Morris, and his 
daughter Louise, who married the Honorable George Eustis, of Louisiana. In 
contrast, the John Dickson Home, also founded by another benevolent George- 
town citizen, is for the benefit in their old age of unsuccessful merchants of the 
District of Columbia. 

[43I 




'Washington ts a City of Columns^* 



"Few cities have borrowed so extensively as 
Washington from the architectural achieve- 
ments of the past. The employment of the col- 
umn in its public architecture is notable. " This 
is a view taken looking out from the Treasury 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

lERHAPS Washington, in spite of its Corcoran, Freer and 
Evans galleries, will never become a great art-student center 
like Paris or New York, but its exhibitions are increasingly 
notable, and the influence of the Fine Arts Commission in 
eliminating bad art in memorial statues, fountains, bridges 
and public buildings, attracts artists to the city, both to 
study and exhibit their work. The American Federation of 
IIIM '^^^^ edits its monthly magazine in Washington and holds 
its annual meeting here. St. Gaudens's greatest accom- 
plishment, the Adams memorial, is in old St. Paul's 
Churchyard. One must grant that the vistas of the city, its columns and cornices, 
its sylvan charm throughout the seasons, its beauty of waters, and its atmospheric 
moods make it paintable. Jules Guerin has caught its characteristics and it has 
produced one or two native interpreters of its woods and marshes, but there should 
be others before it loses all its antebellum cabins and its Georgian mansions, and 
becomes better-ordered, less shiftless, more national, and less Southern. 

Although the city has not yet produced a man of letters, it has attracted 
writers of all sorts. Journalists abound, reporters, correspondents, and newspaper 
princes. Joel Barlow was living at Kalorama, on Rock Creek, when he published 
his American epic. George Bancroft, Henry Adams, John Hay, Roosevelt, and 
Jusserand have published historical studies from Washington. Walt Whitman, 
John Burroughs and Joaquin Miller wrote here. The log cabin of the poet of the 
Sierras was on Meridian Hill where Mr. Henry White's house stands, and was 
removed by the California society to one of the glens of Rock Creek Park. Mrs. 
Southworth's vineclad cottage still overlooks the Potomac. Several novels have 
hrd their scenes laid in W^ashington, notably "Senator North," and "Through 
One Administration." The drama has constantly sought its scene in the capital, 
both in broad comedy and political intrigue. Julia Ward Howe wrote the "Battle 
Hymn of the Republic" in the old Willard Hotel, after returning from an inspec- 
tion of the defenses at Brightwood in 1861. 

During the Great W'ar the gigantic services ot the American Red Cross bound 
the world to Washington as the home of the "Greatest Mother." One of the most 
beautiful tributes paid to the women of the North and South who rendered service 
to their armies during the war between the States has been the erection in Washing- 
ton of this white marble building for the National Headquarters of the American 
Red Cross. It is situated on a terraced lawn, opposite the Mall where it touches 
the White House grounds. The building thus belongs to the most celebrated group 
of single buildings in the United States. The right side faces the Corcoran Art 
Gallery, the left the Memorial Continental Hall. W'est are temporary buildings 




«xH?ffi32/ 



[45] 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

erected for war service needs. The origin of the building is simply told by the 
inscription on the entablature over the main entrance — "A Memorial to the Heroic 
Women of the Civil War." The suggestion for this memorial came from Captain 
James Scrymser, of New York. The building was erected through the subscriptions 
of Captain Scrymser, Mrs. Russell Sage, Mrs. E. H. Harriman, the Rockefeller 
Foundation and Congress. The building is not merely a monument, but contains 
the offices of the headquarters' stafF. A most interesting feature is the magnificent 
window, the gift of the women of the North and South, the former giving the left 
panel, the latter the right, the center being a contribution by both. The window 
depicts the spirit of the Red Cross in times of war and peace, the right panel por- 
traying Red Cross workers on their way to the battlefields, one of them stopping 
to offer a drink of water to a child found on the roadside. The memorial thus 
interprets the Red Cross as the world's international ideal of mercy, lending unsel- 
fish aid whenever and wherever war, pestilence, storm or disaster has wrought dis- 
tress, and knowing no bounds of racial or religious or political separation. 

The value of Washington as a factor in all general education is testified to by the 
custom of annually sending graduating classes of high schools and academies to 
make the capital a vacation visit. From New England alone at each Easter the rail- 
roads bring in from three to five thousand pupils and teachers. Five hundred teach- 
ers from Canada have come in a single party. The Army sends its officers for gradu- 
ate study to the W^ar College and Camp Humphreys, and the vicinity of Annapolis 
gives an interesting sprinkling of midshipmen and naval officers to capital society. 
The National Educational Association has recently established its permanent head- 
quarters in Washington. There is as yet no true national university, as planned by 
George Washington, but it will be realized. Lord Bryce has suggested that it need 
not be of the same type as the great state universities, but that it should be dedi- 
cated to three kinds of study, to theoretic science, to the arts and the artistic side of 
life and to what are called the human studies of a philological, historical, and polit- 
ical order. Although this national university is yet to be founded, the number and 
character of educational institutions and the general opportunities for study, re- 
search, and culture give feature to the city's life. 

The Smithsonian and its museum and libraries, the Carnegie Institution, the 
Naval Observatory, the bureaus of standards, hygiene, and weather observation, 
the bureaus of the Department of Labor, the Library of Congress, and the Capitol, 
a very laboratory for politics, make an educational environment that is a true 
university. Add the annual meetings and conventions that are held in Washington, 
collecting in discussion distinguished men and women of every type, and we have 
possible that system of education Macaulay demonstrated as characteristic of 
Athens: "Almost all the education of a Greek," he says, "consisted in talking and 



[46] 




© Harris & Ewing 

l^tional Headquarters of the 
American ^^d Cross 



This beautiful white marble building is the home ol "The Greatest 
Mother in theWorld"and"A Memorial to the Women of the Civil War** 




Towers of the Smithsonian Institution 



The Institution was founded by an Englishman, James Smithson, 
whose will bequeathed a half million dollars for the founding of 
this institution for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge** 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

listening. His opinions on government were picked up in the debates of the assem- 
bly. If he wished to study metaphysics, instead of shutting himself up with a book, 
he walked down to the market-place to look for a sophist." From the architecture 
ot the Parthenon and the play of Sophocles, from debate, oratory, and association 
with the superior society the lively Greek capital afforded, the Athenian gathered 
his education, stirred by national enthusiasm to his fullest development as an 
individual. If it was an education to live in Athens, it ought to be such to live in 
Washington. The very sight of historical tablets and government buildings fosters 
the idea of nationality, and in so vast a country, of so complex a make-up, the 
production of national consciousness is an important phase of education. It is 
wise and good to realize our capital, to know our nation as a living organism. 

The first daughter born to white parents in Washington after it became the 
seat of government in 1800 was Elizabeth Hooten Stelle. When she was old enough 
to go to school, she had to be sent to Philadelphia, as there were no schools for girls 
in the capital. Attended by a negro maid, the young girl went back and forth by 
stage, the trip taking the best part of a week, and accompanied with discomforts, 
if not actual dangers. Elizabeth probably learned to "sew, floure, write and dance." 
Perhaps she studied Noah Webster's blue-backed speller and Bingham's "Young 
Lady's Accidence, or a Short and Easy Introduction to English Grammar, design'd 
principally for the use of Young Learners, more especially for those of the Fair 
Sex, though proper for Either." The curriculum of the schools of her time was 
very limited. A history of later female education in the capital has not been 
written, but would include many famous institutions, and be interesting reading. 
There are now more than twenty well-established private boarding-schools for 
girls in Washington, one of them with an enrollment of three hundred and fifty 
pupils. This latter school. National Park Seminary, is situated in the beautiful 
Rock Creek valley, about nine miles north of the White House. It obtained its 
name from being bounded on the west by Rock Creek, the valley of which, as far 
as the Maryland line, had, when the school was opening, been recently made a 
national park and the topic of much discussion and description. 

The bill for the national reservation of Rock Creek valley was passed by Con- 
gress in 1890, but the actual purchase not completed until 1894. This park, distinct 
from, though adjoining the Zoological Park, which is also part of the Rock Creek 
valley but a museum protege of the Smithsonian Institution, includes 1,632 acres, 
under the supervision and control of the Chief of Engineers of the United States. 
More than a quarter of a century before its reservation, Frederick Lay Olmstead, 
the distinguished landscape architect, serving in Washington as the general secre- 
tary of the Sanitary Commission, had made frequent excursions into the region 
and been deeply impressed with its natural beauty and suitability for park purposes. 



[48] 



1 


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The Treasury 



Statue ot General 
Sherman on the lett 



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State, War and Nary Building 



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largest buildings in the National Capital 



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THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

In 1866, Major Michler, an engineer officer, appointed to find a site for a "Public 
Park and Presidential Mansion" had recommended the Rock. Creek valley as a 
park worthy of a great people. 

"All the elements which constitute a public resort of the kind can be found in 
this wild and romantic tract of country. With its charming drives and walks, its 
hills and dales, its pleasant valleys and deep ravines, its primeval forests and culti- 
vated fields, its running waters, its rocks clothed with rich fern and mosses, its 
repose and tranquillity, its light and shade, its ever-varying shrubbery, its beautiful 
and extensive views, the locality is already possessed of all the features necessary 
for the object in view. 

Major Michler made further suggestion that the natural beauty of the region 
should be preserved, and that nothing be done by the artist and engineer except 
pruning and removing of what was distasteful, together with improving of roads 
and paths and the construction of new ones as needed. Although it took a genera- 
tion to persuade Congress to the project, when the park was at last secured. Major 
Michler's wise recommendations as to its development were followed. The park is 
remarkable tor its closeness to nature and its lack of artifice, even after a quarter 
of a century of federal control and constantly increasing use by tourists and the 
citizens of the capital. 

If the object of a national park is to protect beauties of nature, give a refuge 
for wild life and prevent private ownership of land valuable for health and recrea- 
tion, that object is attained in Rock Creek Park. The flora of the whole valley is 
varied and charming, and national biological surveys have shown that during the 
spring migrations of birds the greatest number of species have been noted in the 
Rock Creek valley, between Forest Glen and Chevy Chase. It is a bird and tree 
sanctuary, where the wayfarer, like the Greek, finds a presence in every thicket, a 
god in the stream. Emerson has said that in the woods one returns to reason and 
faith and to a conscious relationship between man and nature that brings good to 
the soul. Proximity to such scenes as Rock Creek Park furnishes, means not only 
first-hand knowledge of birds, trees, flowers and stones, but ethical impulses invalu- 
able to the processes of education. 

In 1894, the year Rock Creek Park was opened. National Park Seminary was 
founded, by the genius of a man and a woman who through strict experience had 
learned to value opportunity. It has eventually become an "institution really great 
in its power to touch and mould and transform girl life." It has utilized the advan- 
tages of the capital for the study of civics and science and the arts; the inspiration 
of history and biography while making; the urbane influences of a cosmopolitan 
city. It has utilized these with the thought of the process of character rather than 
mere intellectuality or social polish. And it has stimulated the imagination and 



[50] 




The ''Gothic Arch of American Elms' 



Beheld as one looks up New Hampshire Avenue — one 
of many such treed avenues in the Nation's Capital 




The Inviting Shaae along ^^l^rth Capitol Street 



James Bryce, when he was here as Ambassador from 
Great Britain, said. "I know of no city in which the 
trees seem to be so much a part of the city as Wash- 
ington. Nothing can be more delightful. . . ." 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

furnished the memory by being set in the midst of "woods and templed hills," 
where song birds and wild flowers abound, where its sponsor stream sings over 
grey rocks and curves along meadows purpled with April violets; where the white- 
oaks have lifted their green crowns for a century and a half, and nature and the 

poet cry 

"With me 
The girl, in rock and plain, 
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower 
Shall feel an overseeing power 
To kindle or restrain. 
She shall be sportive as the fawn 
That wild with glee across the lawn 
Or up the mountain springs; 
And hers shall be the breathing balm, 
And hers the silence and the calm 
Of mute insensate things. 
The floating clouds their estate shall lend 
To her; for her the willow bend; 
Nor shall she fail to see 
Even in the motions of the storm 
Grace that shall mould the maiden's torm 
By silent sympathy. 
The stars ot midnight shall be dear 
To her; and she shall lend her ear 
In many a secret place 

Where rivulets dance their wayward round. 
And beauty born ot murmuring sound 
Shall fall into her face, 
And vital feelings of delight 
Shall rear her form to stately height. 
Her virgin bosom swell." 

This influence of nature as the wholesome and vital factor in education deter- 
mined the choice of the site of the National Park Seminary. The type of educational 
life that has grown up there seems to have flowered out of the Glen, as naturally 
as the native anemones, the dogwood and laurel, the violets, the golden-rod and 
holly. Outdoor life prevails; informal, devoted to long walks in jolly groups over 
the macadam Maryland roads, or scrambling through the blossoming woods, kodak 
in hand: and organized, in the Student Athletic Association, which governs the 
sports and events of the gymnasium and the field. The fresh morning air invigorates 
swift passage from building to building, when between classes come glimpses of 
birds and trees and even airplanes, hunting Langley Field. The mellow spring twi- 
lights after dinner mean garlands of girls winding, arm-entwined, around Hebe 
Circle, breathing the fragrant spring, their pale dresses making them look like white 
moths among the glimmering fireflies. And the myriads of open windows bring in 
sweet healthy dreams to eyes whose last sleepy gaze is upon the clear stars that 
glow "now red, now blue" between rocking tree tops. Within call of the Main 



[5^] 




cA "^ght Uiew of The Washington Monument 

The oApex is Lighted by a Searchlight 



"Taken by itself the Washington Monument stands 
not only as one of the most stupendous works of man, 
but also as one ot the most beautiful of all human cre- 
ations. Dominating the entire District of Columbia, 
it has taken its place with the Capitol and the White 
House as the three foremost national structures" 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

Building are secluded retreats embowered in tern and ivy and honeysuckle, where a 
stone bench invites chums to mutual confidence, while they watch a red-bird bathe 
in the splashing stream, or listen to the thrush's melody between the lustier, synco- 
pated harmonies that are coming from some neighboring club-house. Those darling 
club-houses! There are eight of them, a miniature World's Exposition in national 
styles, Dutch windmill, Swiss chalet, Mediaeval tower, Spanish mission, American 
bungalow, Japanese temple. They are the educational recreation centers of this 
girl community, founded long before any of the charming Blue Triangle huts, but 
doing similar service on a more intensive scale. Ask why these clubs are fostered 
by their Alma Mater, why they are so intimate a part of the life of every pupil, so 
fascinating a lure to new girls and old. They will tell you that they love the club- 
house because it is theirs, a little house, a fireside nook, to get them away from the 
crowd when they are solitary, and to give them jolly friends and games when they 
are sociable. They will say that the club-house is home, with a benign maternal 
presence to comfort or command, a kitchen to cook in, an electric iron, a piano, 
light magazines to drop into wicker chairs with, and Walt Whitman's "institution 
of the dear love of comrades." They will confess, dimpling, that they would like to 
keep house here — for two — and will show you the kitchen aluminum, the silver 
cofFee-urn, the monogrammed dish towels, the gas-oven and the Rules for the 
House Committee, "that you must keep, or lose your house privileges." One dam- 
sel may add that here she learned to dust, having always before lived in a hotel; 
and another show you her club recipe for hot chocolate fudge that an elder club- 
sister of hers made for hundreds of thousands of soldiers at Camp Dix; while an- 
other tells you gravely that she is an only child and never knew how sweet or how 
hard it is to live with girls. "But I have learned to do it, and to value it." You 
will be reminded that a woman architect designed all these houses, and that each 
club furnishes its own house according to its own idea, thereby educating its deco- 
rative taste, and also learning how to expend its income wisely, for club accounts 
must be carefully kept and audited and there are always overhead expenses to be 
remembered, and no deficit to be allowed at the end of the year. And then the 
friendships formed in the clubs! Youth is the fertile season for sowing friendship; 
soil and seed are both ready for sprouting, and no other friendships are apt to be so 
influential, so disinterested. They last, in memory always, in correspondence often. 

There is a prettv story of Abigail Fillmore and her schoolmate, Julia Miller, at 
Miss Sedwick's School in Lenox, Mass., who were one day discussing their future: 

"Abbie said that when she was grown she meant to teach school. 'Oh, no, you 
won't,' said I, 'my father says your father will be President some day and you 
won't be allowed to teach school. You'll be the President's daughter and live in 
the White House.' 



[54] 




^ 



SO 



«- 



THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

'"What nonsense" she said, 'I am going to be a teacher and earn my own living.' 

"'Well, I don't believe any such thing. But if you teach school, I'll come to 
your school as a pupil, even if I'm an old woman and married.' 

"'All right,' said Abbie, laughing. 'You'll look well doing it. And if my father 
ever gets to be President, you shall visit me in the W'hite House.'" 

Abigail Fillmore did teach as a pupil in the State Normal at Albany and Julia 
Miller was in her class. Later when Mr. Fillmore became President, the invitation 
to the White House came to Julia for the opening of Congress, 1852, and the two 
friends were united in the gayeties of a Washington winter. Julia Miller's descrip- 
tions of the parties, celebrities, and costumes of the season are naive and enthusi- 
astic, just such letters as an appreciative girl would write home today. She tells of 
a New Year's reception, where Abigail wore a silk of changeable green and red, with 
three flounces and fine French muslin embroideries in waist and sleeves, while she 
wore a Napoleon blue silk with black velvet trimming and embroidered muslin 
sleeves. She describes Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, then ninety-two years old, lively 
with fascinating memories; a visit to Mount Vernon with Washington Irving, "a 
placid, sweet, lovable old gentleman," when the Washington family were still the 
owners of the estate; and the unveiling of the statue of General Jackson in Lafayette 
Square on the thirty-eighth anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. The statue 
had been cast by the sculptor, Clark Mills, at his Bladensburg studio, east of the 
city, and the dedication was a great patriotic and artistic event, although the 
square was still a ragged, unkempt enclosure, not at all the honorable park Wash- 
ington intended when he named it for Lafayette. But Julia Miller enjoyed every 
day of her sight-seeing. 

The lure of Washington is amazingly strong in girls. The romance and beauty 
of the city, its relations to the past, its modern history in the making, its varied 
types of society and the important role of social intercourse itself, are attractive to 
the young girl who looks out on a new womanhood in which she must relate herself 
to civics and social justice. Washington, moreover, is a border city, with many of 
the sweet vestiges of the Southland lingering about it, seductive especially to the 
North and the West, indeed to every human heart. Wise parents, looking for educa- 
tion beyond the high school, education that shall have all the inspiration of Wash- 
ington — an inspiration which the environment of no other city in the Union can 
give — and yet be free of the shackles and distractions of town life, seek Forest Glen. 
The porters on the Baltimore and Ohio express trains point it out as they approach 
Washington: "Yes, suh, dat's de Semernary, suh. All dem lights, suh. No, 'taint 
no city, suh, leastways, no onerary city, suh, jus' a young ladies' city. You jes' 
orter see 'em, suh, when dey stops disher train for em ter go or come at vacation, 
suh, jes' like er buhds en de spring, er chatterin' and er singin'." 



n) 



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[57] 




T3 



ES 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

^HE speeding express gives only a glimpse of the Odeon, with its 
Greek portico, summoning poetry and music, or the Villa set in 
charming winter gardens of box-hedge and cypress; but it is 
only twenty minutes back by railway, or better, a half hour by 
motor. Out the Avenue of the Presidents to Brightwood and 
Georgia Avenue, the old Pike of '64; past Fort Stevens, once 
"a strong piece of War's geometry" where Lincoln stood tear- 
essly under fire; past the site of the toll-gate where the Sixth 
Corps drove General Early away from the Capital; past Walter Reed Hospital 
with all its hopes of human reconstruction; past the Maryland boundary line and 
Silver Spring, the estate of those Blairs who have figured in Washington history 
since the days of The Globe, into a Maryland lane, picturesque with honeysuckle, 
sassafras and periwinkle, and here are the beautiful grounds of the Seminary! If 
time to linger amid tempting scenes is adequate, another approach would have 
taken the visitor from the city over the million-dollar Connecticut Avenue Bridge, 
through the interesting roads of the Zoological Park, and into the enchanting 
ravines of Rock Creek Park itself. Following the stream northward, exclaiming 
over the golden sylvan-shadowed pools, or the foaming rush over the great boulders 
with which its bed is so frequently laden, the visitor may overtake a bevy of Forest 
Glen girls in their car, returning from a sightseeing trip to Arlington or Great Falls, 
or on horseback, trailing happily along the bridle-path that follows the bank of the 
Creek, now one side, now the other. To a Forest Glen girl the splashing joy of 
crossing the frequent concreted fords of Rock Creek is inexhaustible. Indeed, 
Rock Creek, with its thirty or forty miles of meandering about Montgomery 
County before it sloughs its final clay banks into the Potomac at Georgetown, is 
her stream, wherever it is. It encircles her glen, it bears her violets to the sea; it 
nurtures the roots of her oaks. It is along the meadows or on the laurelled brows of 
Rock Creek that she has gathered memories and dreamed dreams more precious 
than schoolroom texts. 

Do not class our Seminary girl tor a moment among abnormal nature-wor- 
shippers. Being female and young, the Monday privilege of F Street shops, tempt- 
ing with finery, gay with the business of women, is a precious excitement, and, as 
one girl wit remarked, "She could shop on F Street forever, if the Treasury did 
not block her progress." Pennsylvania Avenue means another sort of street exhil- 
aration to her, that of great crowds and processions, where her glance can scan a 
mile of wide cleared thoroughfare, bordered by surging human beings and tossing 
flags. She has heard grandfather tell of the Grand Review on the Avenue in May, 
1865, of the funeral pomps of martyred presidents, of famous inaugurations in 
storm and in fair weather, of historic festivals and pageants; she has heard of the 





14 






V 


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V 


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[59 









THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 




'Peace 'T'arade 



A section of the "Peace Parade" 
coming up Pennsylvania Avenue 



Suffragette Parade when Fort Myer troops were ordered out; of the morning when 
Papa Joffre rode in cheering triumph; of the Preparedness Parade, headed by 
Wilson, with his flag and straw hat. The Avenue means all these to her, but it 
means most when it is the marching way for the cadets from West Point or the mid- 
shipmen from Annapolis. Her heart then beats wildly, and she finds them nonpareil, 
these unrivalled warriors, the masculine form divine. Blue or grav, it matters not 
which he is, provided he is! As the level steady lines wheel into Fifteenth Street, the 
Avenue has a radiance that makes it the most glorious street in the world and the 
Seminary girl turns regretfully from it to seek her trolley for Forest Glen. 

But the clean woodsy odors of the Glen revive her spirits, the lights are twinkling 
welcome, and savory preparations increase the appetite of which she even ordinarily 
boasts as hearty. Then she dreamily realizes that the Glen School spells Home, and 
that its education, expert as that ot any vocational institution, is intended to 
develop in her a love of domestic ideals, as well as a knowledge of national history. 
The lure of Washington has fascinated her with its hints of public grandeur, of 
political intrigue, ot international pomps, but experience shows that the greatest 
men are the simplest, those born to the highest rank, the most democratic. A newly 
arrived mistress of the White House, Mrs. Tyler, wrote to a friend: "Instead of 
talking dresses and bonnets, I know you will think I ought to give my impressions 



60 ■ 




cA Lone '■Pine 



On the Upper Potomac, 
standing out in poster effect 






aix.r.! 






A BIRD'S-EYE VII 

Showing location ot National Pai 
indicated by the arrow in the up] 
after the plans of the commission 
grounds is Lafayette Square, trc 
north. Those driving to the Se 
obliqiieU' to the right on Alaska 
after which the way is clear. 1 
nary; one via Chew Chase am 
latter is the most beautiful of tl' 
scenes in the Park as are pictu 




OF WASHINGTON 

inary to the northward of the cit\', 
-hand corner. The city is pictured 
n . Just north of the White House 
center of which i6th Street runs 
' follow this street till thev turn 
e; then north on Georgia Avenue, 
re two other routes to the Semi- 
through Rock Creek Park. The 
; ways and leads past many such 
re on the left and on the right. 




THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 





Congress on an Opening l^ay 



It is here the heart of the nation beats and 
the future of our country is mapped out 



of these intellectual giants, but when you meet them in real life, you forget they are 
great men at all, and just find them the most charming companions in the world, 
talking the most delightful nonsense." Washington is a democratic city, and, if 
not the center of the nation geographically, it is the gravitating center of the home 
life of Uncle Sam's big family, where a national democracy is maintained by the 
mingling of all kinds of people from all the counties of all the states in the Union. 
A residence in Washington certainly makes one less provincial. Residence in any big 
city makes one urban, more or less, usually with a certain snobbishness. In Wash- 
ington, however, the dependence of the national capital upon the whole nation 
keeps alive a sense of democracy, and nourishes a wide human sympathy that looks 
toward a possible brotherhood, with the Capital as paternal adviser to every man. 
Democracy radiating from home centers is therefore the ideal at National Park 
Seminary. The extent of patronage represented, the number of states, the varied 
communities and industries pupils know and talk ot; the salmon-canning of Astoria, 
the shoe factories of Lvnn, mines in Butte, farm land of Illinois, ranches in the 
Pan Handle, tobacco factories in Tampa, intimate talk of these widens any girl's 
vision. Towns scattered over the whole map become vital spots because school 
friends live there. Sympathy grows through such acquaintance. .Adaptation must 
result also, for standards of living differ in communities, and for the girl from Cali- 
fornia to room with the girl from Connecticut is often an ennobling test of demo- 



[65] 





4 


V. 


A 




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Q 



THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 

cratic patience and understanding on both sides. And the experiment poHshes 
both. In the Seminary chib Hte also, to which all are admitted and in which no 
exclusive clique grouping is permitted by the secret committee of students, de- 
mocracy is supreme. Here, too, the ideals of the home community are the ultimate 
aim. Each club is a hive of domestic impulses, with the club mother as the queen 
bee, and the Neighbor's Law written over each threshold. The Seminary govern- 
ment recognizes these club families as a national government recognizes states. 
Certain prerogatives are theirs, affairs not to be interfered with, but inter-club 
matters are regulated by the school. Representation by clubs is granted in student 
government, athletics, house management, class organization and festivals, and 
the club indeed makes the school unique. 

No acquaintance with National Park Seminary is adequate that does not 
include her festivals. They are part of her educational system, planned to keep 
alive myths, legends, and facts of history and literature, to encourage library and 
art research, to give outlet to the natural dramatic instinct of the voung, to teach 
various individualities to work together for a harmonious common purpose, and 
to applaud the art of joyous, healthy, community play as one of the essentials men 
live by. Centenaries, famous men, and unusual events are celebrated, but the usual 
festivals begin in October with the harvest home of Maryland fields, followed by 
the mediteval witchery of Hallowe'en, when hundreds of sheet-clad ghosts move in 
procession up and down the Glen, from every hollow of which mock horrors emerge 
like miasma from a swamp. Thanksgiving preserves the memory of colonial settle- 
ments, with the President's proclamation to be read, basket-ball games, and a 
marvellous Aladdin feast before the great crackling fire, the whole school dining 
at eight family tables, those of the eight clubs, and surrounded by lavish decorative 
gifts from field, garden and orchard. December brings a holier festival, that of the 
lighting of the candles in the wreath for Advent, and the singing ot old Christmas 
carols proclaiming Emmanuel and good-will to all men. Many a new resolve and 
illuminated heart goes out from the pine-fragrant ciusk of the carol service. This is 
the nobler celebration, but the next night all are dressed are merry children, to hail 
old Father Christmas amid a forest of gloriously lighted trees in the gymnasium 
where old and young, black and white, gather in the old Southern family fashion 
to cry "Christmas gift," and make merry with toys and games dear to real little 
children. After the holidays the great festival is the procession on Twelfth Night, 
which combines the legends and songs of the Orient, mediaeval England, and the 
Christian Church, and becomes a brilliant pageant of color and grouping. Candle- 
mas is another impressive procession, where a church ritual has been transferred to 
a reminder of the essential purity of womanhood and her power to illuminate the 
liome. There is a white dinner, white dresses, a chapel service, and memorable 



[66 




it C 

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Home from a ^de in '^ck Creek ^ark 



Unc oJ tlic many healthful recre- 
ations at National Park Seminary 




cAlong ^Upck Creek 



At the western boundary of the 
National Park Seminary campus 



THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 





cAlpha House 



For recreation and idling 
at National Park Seminary 



curves of flame that flash from the Hghting candles. The rosy hearts and favors 
of St. Valentine, the green and white decorations for St. Patrick, when Irish songs 
resound to the harp, the egg-nests and rabbits and lilies of Easter after the Seniors 
waken the houses with their hallelujahs, pass too quickly, and soon the spring brings 
Mav Day, the out-of-door day, when she who most nearly approaches the ideal as 
a member of the school familv, is voted for and crowned with the flowers of the 
Glen, and honored with lovelv dances and traditional songs. " Under the greenwood 
tree" means a vision of Mav Day to any National Park girl. The phrase is a torch 
to memory to remind her afresh of her own youthful ideals, and how far she has 
transmuted them into action or adjusted them to broader fields of living. 

These festivals then not onlv educate in literature and art and train tor health 
by pleasant, wholesome play, but they give a community and sequence ot mem- 
ories that form tender bonds among all National Park girls, increasing their 
sympathies and making them fellow-citizens of their sylvan democracy, "eager, 
active, enthusiastic," wherever they are, whatever their age. The emotions are 
important as a foundation to ethics, and these happy memories of community 
song and play can be for nothing but good. The singing of the national anthem put 
over the sale of many a war bond, and festivals induce a better citizenship for the 
school and for the nation. 



[69] 




7T~vr THE LURE OF WASHINGTON 



The close of the twenty-fifth year of the school was celebrated by an outdoor 
pageant called "The Spirit of the Glen," in which over a hundred and twenty-five 
girls took part and which the neighborhood witnessed. It was given in a prologue 
and five episodes, representing the history of the lovely spot from the time when the 
tree spirits and native birds were the sole denizens of the glen, until 1894, when the 
school was founded, and Truth, with the torch of knowledge and the printed book, 
came to dwell in the glen with Beauty and be crowned by her. The episodes were 
all based on actual history and were an education to the participants and the 
audience in the customs of the Algonquins, the settlement of Maryland, the develop- 
ment of the Maryland manor, stories of Revolutionary heroes, and of the Confed- 
erate advance upon Washington in 1864. The Congressional Library experts in the 
National Museum and local tradition furnished authorities. The result, as the work 
of tradition, history and imagination, was a piece of lovely living art, that stirred 
national feeling by discovering to many what interest lies in the history of the little 
place we live in, together with a new recognition of development and growth toward 
ideal. It is the province and the duty of any school to do this. In a firm desire to suc- 
ceed in doing it, as well as in many other phases of a young woman's education. The 
Glen School deserves her often-bestowed epithets of National and American, and 
thus has been the lure to Washington of hundreds of girls of ambition and character. 




'Our llji' cscnpt Jtoni ptthlu huuiil^ 
Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks'* 



[70] 



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